- Joined
- Nov 30, 2022
Biggest issue with making a alternative to AH.com is the huge monopoly they have had on the area and how hard it is to get people to move.
Shitty Alternate History Thread - If only the Romans had AK-47's they would've survived...
- Thread starter ICametoLurk
- Start date
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🔧 Actively working on site again.
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2023
Harry Turtledove really soured me on the concept of alternate history fiction for some time. I became convinced that if AltHistory wasn't "what if the nazis won" then it was either "what if ww2 battleship vs dinosaurs" or "what if modern battleship vs ww2 battleship".
That said to completely contradict the modus operandi of the thread I read this really interesting anthology book called Pavane in highschool, depicting an alternate universe where the Catholic Church gained control over all of Europe.
That said to completely contradict the modus operandi of the thread I read this really interesting anthology book called Pavane in highschool, depicting an alternate universe where the Catholic Church gained control over all of Europe.
It's pretty good but sags heavily in the middle. If you ever read it I recommend skipping The White Boat unless you enjoy tedium.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2023
This is the key issue.
I'll admit for all its many faults AH.com's, ah, AH (heh heh) stuff is still pretty good IMO.... though I stick almost entirely to Before 1900 and Maps n' Graphics. If one stays out of at least Chat then the forum becomes far more usable, and there's no point to another AH forum then unless it's to bitch on idiots and hey that's what we do here already.
It's essentially wanting a usable Chat by that point and then you ask why you want it for an AH forum in the first place.
Turtledove's TDS aside, he's the unfortunate bastard the hobby needed to get it into any even vaguely mainstream interest, since you can just point to one of his books or stories as a convenient example of "what if". And I feel everyone has their one Turtledove yarn they secretly or not-so-secretly really like (mine's The Two Georges).
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- Joined
- Aug 22, 2020
Turtledove ain't so bad. Sure his non-combat-scene prose is about as interesting as watching paint dry most of the time, but his characters are usually pretty easy to like and get invested in
The Southern Victory series, aliens invade in WW2 series, The Two Georges, Japan invades Hawaii duology, and the Shakespeare ñovel are good to varying degrees. The Two Georges and the Shakespeare one are legitimately good. The bells and whistles he sticks on his formula work in those ones, unlike in that dumb "Atlantis" series or the true slog that is the WW2 starts in 1938 series
Non-AH works of his that are alright are his tetralogy about the Greek cousin traders. Straight historical fiction. The "WW2 but in a fantasyish world with magic" series and his "Byzantine empire expy with magic" books too. The tetralogy about the Roman soldiers and the Celt chief who get transported by Druid magic to the Byzantine expy world is pretty fn good
The Southern Victory series, aliens invade in WW2 series, The Two Georges, Japan invades Hawaii duology, and the Shakespeare ñovel are good to varying degrees. The Two Georges and the Shakespeare one are legitimately good. The bells and whistles he sticks on his formula work in those ones, unlike in that dumb "Atlantis" series or the true slog that is the WW2 starts in 1938 series
Non-AH works of his that are alright are his tetralogy about the Greek cousin traders. Straight historical fiction. The "WW2 but in a fantasyish world with magic" series and his "Byzantine empire expy with magic" books too. The tetralogy about the Roman soldiers and the Celt chief who get transported by Druid magic to the Byzantine expy world is pretty fn good
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- Joined
- Nov 30, 2022
I like Turtledove stuff he did a pretty decent job with making AH popular and all. Some of the issues people have with cliches aren't really his fault due to him having created them or more a issue with people without imagination trying to follow or worse, executives meddling in publication and marketing wanting to have their own piece of the pie and just copying what has been done.
Speaking of AH.com however I recently discovered a secret life hack that Ian doesn't want you to know exists: You can access hundreds of old timelines and threads, mostly from the early days of the site and later days of usenet! All you have to do is add /shwi/ (which I assume stands for the old soc.history.what-if) to the site URL and you have access to over 8mb of pure html text of timelines!
Most of these are of course incomplete, and all are dead and closed. Some are discussions, some are just timelines, some are timelines with discussions going on, some are literally just the OP. Parent Directory merely lands you back on the regular AH homepage. You do not need a account to access it. There is a zip called AH.zip which I assume contains all the files but it doesn't seem to work when downloaded so I might need to manually download and archive it.
Here are a few of the interesting tidbits you can find on this page.
For All Time : THE dystopian timelines, where FDR dies early and the entire world proceeds to take the wrong and worst choice every time all time. Used to be almost a meme, now mostly forgotten.
Adam Yoshida - The Third World War : A pretty detailed timeline of a WW3 started by Carter and Brezhnev both stumbling their dumbasses into it in 1980 after a 1979 that goes a bit more chaotically to the world than the one we had, featuring Poland's Solidarity causing a nationwide rising that forces the USSR to intervene and Iran's hostage crisis that forces Carter to push for a actual operation on the ground. Apparently this guy, Yoshida, actually published this as a book later on in 2011 and wrote some other AH books. Might check him out.
Lilburne's World : Or "England on the 30 Years' War" it is a pretty big timeline with a POD of the death of Alessandro Farnese, duca di Parma e Piacenza dying while in Flanders trying to put down the Dutch. Given his contributions in the Netherlands and later France this quickly causes the story of the 30 Years War to slide from what we know. Never completed but went as far as the mid 20th century. Looks banger.
Engines of History : Babbage's analytical engine gets built. Only cover about 50 years but a interesting read.
USENET 1901 (NOT an ISOT) : This one is a discussion, and I post it because the very first reply shows something which in today's AH.com would likely get you banned or at least warned for how blunt and precise the poster is in correctly explaining the cultural context that OP is missing and how such things would likely go about.
A very interesting little nugget of history indeed. Have fun everyone.
Speaking of AH.com however I recently discovered a secret life hack that Ian doesn't want you to know exists: You can access hundreds of old timelines and threads, mostly from the early days of the site and later days of usenet! All you have to do is add /shwi/ (which I assume stands for the old soc.history.what-if) to the site URL and you have access to over 8mb of pure html text of timelines!
Most of these are of course incomplete, and all are dead and closed. Some are discussions, some are just timelines, some are timelines with discussions going on, some are literally just the OP. Parent Directory merely lands you back on the regular AH homepage. You do not need a account to access it. There is a zip called AH.zip which I assume contains all the files but it doesn't seem to work when downloaded so I might need to manually download and archive it.
Here are a few of the interesting tidbits you can find on this page.
For All Time : THE dystopian timelines, where FDR dies early and the entire world proceeds to take the wrong and worst choice every time all time. Used to be almost a meme, now mostly forgotten.
Adam Yoshida - The Third World War : A pretty detailed timeline of a WW3 started by Carter and Brezhnev both stumbling their dumbasses into it in 1980 after a 1979 that goes a bit more chaotically to the world than the one we had, featuring Poland's Solidarity causing a nationwide rising that forces the USSR to intervene and Iran's hostage crisis that forces Carter to push for a actual operation on the ground. Apparently this guy, Yoshida, actually published this as a book later on in 2011 and wrote some other AH books. Might check him out.
Lilburne's World : Or "England on the 30 Years' War" it is a pretty big timeline with a POD of the death of Alessandro Farnese, duca di Parma e Piacenza dying while in Flanders trying to put down the Dutch. Given his contributions in the Netherlands and later France this quickly causes the story of the 30 Years War to slide from what we know. Never completed but went as far as the mid 20th century. Looks banger.
Engines of History : Babbage's analytical engine gets built. Only cover about 50 years but a interesting read.
USENET 1901 (NOT an ISOT) : This one is a discussion, and I post it because the very first reply shows something which in today's AH.com would likely get you banned or at least warned for how blunt and precise the poster is in correctly explaining the cultural context that OP is missing and how such things would likely go about.
A very interesting little nugget of history indeed. Have fun everyone.
OrangeJuliusEvola
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2021
Holy shit, the TL I wrote back in the 90s on shwi is there. I thought it was lost to time.
And no, I'm not going to say which one it was, for obvious reasons.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
Well, for as retarded an idea as it is, alternatehistory.forum is now online thanks to an autistic friend of mine. God Help Us All.
My general idea, at least as it is going forward, is to try and wrangle some banned AH.com users together and to encourage a bit more of an open community. No instant perm bans, try and not suppress the forum as much as Ian did. Is it a pointless plan? Probably, but if Ian ever shits the bed totally, it might not be a bad idea having this in the background. It's shockingly cheap to keep a small forum up, so this will be going on for a while.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, any ideas/recommendations?
EDIT 2: Also, important note. The Email server is shit apparently, the email takes a few minute to arrive.
My general idea, at least as it is going forward, is to try and wrangle some banned AH.com users together and to encourage a bit more of an open community. No instant perm bans, try and not suppress the forum as much as Ian did. Is it a pointless plan? Probably, but if Ian ever shits the bed totally, it might not be a bad idea having this in the background. It's shockingly cheap to keep a small forum up, so this will be going on for a while.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, any ideas/recommendations?
EDIT 2: Also, important note. The Email server is shit apparently, the email takes a few minute to arrive.
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- Joined
- Dec 17, 2022
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
Yeah, it literally started several hours ago. And @WolfeTone showed up to post this:
EDIT:
I figured out my plan for bad content. Do what the Marxists do and consign them to:
- Joined
- May 20, 2019
Made an account; currently awaiting admin approval
The quick rule of thumb for history/not history is the 25 year rule. Every subject needs to be at least 25 years old.
So any TL that would change 9/11 can only be posted after 2026.
There will always be people who get MATI & MOTI. History tells us of humans in the past; and thus about identity. And plenty of people take identity serious and personally. So the mods should be ready to deal with it.
Make a rule about at least trying to use correct spelling and grammar. Some posts on AH.com are pure ESL nonsense. Like utterly incomprehensible.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
Should be approved now.
Good points. I will say that maybe things could be a little flexible on the 25 year rule or a little more harsh as needed, but yeah, generally a generation or so of separation is necessary.
Currently, it's me and Thucydides, so I'm not too worried. But yeah, I'll do my best to tardwrangle both the users and mods.
EDIT:
Which one of you clowns is this?
Attachments
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- Joined
- Aug 6, 2022
I still have a soft spot for the Worldwar series despite some of it's flaws, since it was what got me interested in history to begin with.
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2021
mine was the one where a Nazi SS officer gets sent to hyperborea to fight literal Untermensch for Aryans its fucking great.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
I too unironically am a Worldwar enjoyer. My favorite part is how humans are literally willing to nuke the Earth to ashes to the point it bothers the Race.
What's this one called? I've never heard of it.
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2022
What I like mostly about Worldwar is how unique the invaders are, at least compared to the average alien invasion story. They don't have energy weapons, gravity defying hovercraft or anything like that. In terms of technology they're actually somewhat less advanced than modern humanity, only surpassing us in spaceflight technology.
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2021
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- Dec 12, 2022
Reading the summary, this is literally a Nazi Isekai. "A Wehrmacht Officer in another world!" Absolutely fantastic, it's going on my reading list.
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2021
BScCollateral
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 28, 2018
In a weird way, that's my problem with it.
The Race invaded Earth expecting to encounter knights on horseback, so their weapons would be designed to kill knights on horseback. If we were invading a country from the Middle Ages, we'd send Strykers or MRAPs armed with low-caliber Gatling guns, and light mortars, not M1s with APFSDS rounds. Skywardens and not A-10s. That heavy stuff would be more trouble than it's worth.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2023
I'm sure alternatehistory.forum will, like most similar alternative forums, collapse in a pile of recriminations and low user counts within 6 months to a year, but I made an account anyway.